


A Wish Granted.

by hakaibunshi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Dragonshipping, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Slow Build, Strong Language, tags will be added according to process, whole gang will be there eventually, wishshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakaibunshi/pseuds/hakaibunshi
Summary: After many years of failing, a boy finally solved a puzzle and so he was granted a wish.**AU where Jounouchi is the MC and things happen (partly) a little differently.**Jounouchi Katsuya is your average high school delinquent.He doesn't want much from life, just graduate - somehow - and make it out of this city.Earn some money. Help his sister.Looking at his track record, it's not going to be easy.But his life is about to take a turn when his path becomes entangled with Yugi's.Before either of them knows it, Katsuya would become the answer to Yugi's deepest longing - and following this calling, he would embark on a journey out of the trap hole he had built for himself.But it isn't always easy to become someone's dream.
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Mutou Yuugi/Yami Yuugi, Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Yami Yuugi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 20





	1. Set on a journey.

**Author's Note:**

> This will go back all the way to the beginning of Yugi's story, just that it isn't really his story anymore, but Jounouchi's.  
> Also, there might or might not have been a slight alteration in what he wished for. We will see~

Katsuya pressed his eyes shut. His head hurt like hell—neck and shoulders so rigid every movement made him older. Around him, the crow's low croaking chased in deranged copies of laughter through the bleak back alleys of a city ready to lay the weekend to rest and embrace another pointless cycle of repetition and assembly line patterns like an unwelcome second cousin. Reclining daylight painted Domino’s downtown in a late summer romance, lost on people like him. Just shadows getting longer—another day sliding into another night. _Same old tragic bullshit_.

The pain was much more vivid than the smudged twilight reflecting off the skyline. He planted his back against the wall, scraps of dirt and dust fell onto his jacket. The support didn’t do much to soothe the aching. He spat out some blood to the side and snuffled carefully. A round-bellied rat dashed out underneath a pile of trash bags just to vanish behind an abandoned cardboard box.

It wouldn’t have been _this_ bad if Honda had been there, too. Together they usually made a pretty tough combo. But today, some brutes from his neighborhood caught him on his own. Which still hadn’t been enough handicap for them to put a dent in his recent win streak. He sure had stood his ground like the legend he was. Just got a bit bruised in the process—nothing his old man couldn’t do better than those amateurs, anyway.

He wiped the jacket’s sleeve, which was only clinging onto some threats at this point, across his face, but most of the blood was already dry and just got smeared. At least his nose wasn’t broken. But he should find a bathroom, preferably _before_ a cop spotted him like this. He clenched his fingers around his left arm, tending to a pretty hefty cut from his shoulder to his elbow. No hope for that jacket; he worried more about the bleeding that just wouldn’t stop properly. The cut wasn’t in any way threateningly deep, but it wasn’t shallow either. A slight swelling clenched his facial muscles tight, but judging by how he was still able to move them, it wasn’t too bad. Over the years, he had mastered this guessing game. Surely there was gonna be a blue eye; that was unavoidable. But no missing tooth! He clicked his tongue.

The metallic taste in his mouth sure was familiar—but it would never _not_ be disgusting. He checked his whereabouts.

Left: a dumpster, a dead end. Not the type you could climb to make your way around via fire exits—right: an open road. But not a big one, and it was already pretty late. He would be able to slip away somehow from there, just into the next alley. All he needed was to get down to the park, where he knew there was a public bathroom.

His clothes were damaged in multiple places: the cut in his jacket sleeve, one more, a bit smaller, in the shirt, leaving his belly exposed, which had suffered some cuts and scratches, too. One or two of them might leave a faint scar. Even his jeans had a slit now, down by the left front pocket. He sighed and touched down his body to feel for his belongings. Phone still there, thank god, though the drained battery left no option to call Honda. His wallet was gone, of course. Not that it mattered much, he wasn’t stupid. All essential cards and some just-in-case money were in his school locker. His wallet was mostly empty, save a couple of bugs. Never more than a warm dinner, never less than an emergency bus ride.

His knife was gone! Now, that was annoying. He didn’t recall one of the losers taking it, but even if he had just dropped it somewhere in the haste of the fight, by now, some other lucky nutcase surely had taken care of it. _c'est la vie_.

His head killed him. He pressed it back against the wall. The outside pressure worked against pain for all about two seconds. Slowly, he moved his foot up and down, trying the muscles because earlier he thought he might have strained his angle, but it seemed fine after all.

His wrist still hurt pretty badly—which stemmed from _his_ punch, though, and he was kind of proud of it. But now was not the time to dwell on his victory. He took a deep breath and pushed himself off the wall. A pained moan escaped him only because he knew he was alone there. The park was a couple of blocks away, but all the shortcuts were well known to him, no longer than 20 minutes even in this state. He stumbled along the wall, his fingers hovering over the dirty surface, ready to offer support at any time. His whole torso was aching. He managed to haul himself to the small T-section, peeked into the open street, and—to his relief—spotted no one who would pose an issue. Two little boys were playing on the other side of the street. Few shops beside the convenience stores were still open, but not many people were hanging around outside. The ones who did, were drunk or close enough, hurrying home or distracted by livid interactions. He checked his wristwatch only to discover it was broken. _Fucking fantastic_. The window for him to get home and avoid unnecessary confrontation was usually closing around eleven. He had to make sure to get home either before then or wait until past midnight. So right now, considering the opening times and all that, it would be sometime between eight and nine, close to the latter probably.

To the best of his ability, he straightened his posture and started to walk down the street, keeping close to the wall to give himself some cover. He turned into the second alley down that way, went on for a couple of meters, slightly more relaxed as it was empty here, but suddenly stopped and clenched his teeth, recalling that he had been here just the other night. That’s right… The little gremlin’s game shop was here. He looked straight at the _Kame Game Shop_ storefront and, of course, as his luck demanded, his classmate just came out to renew the writing on the chalkboard sign, probably about to finish up for the day.

Katsuya stood still, trying not to make a sound—he really didn’t want to have this confrontation right now—and quickly thought of any other way to take. Maybe, if he just didn’t move, Yugi would not notice him and just go back inside. _Nope_. “Jounouchi-kun?”

As a response to the worrying way his name had been thrown into the wind, he forced a snarky grin, not sure his facial muscles were properly working. “Whaddup, Yugi, you lookin’ for a fight, too?” Sounded tough enough. Good. And Yugi had clearly flinched right there, even if just for a second, angsty to catch a beating. Yugi would know better than to get close to him. Yugi didn’t know better, it turned out.

“W-what are you talking about,” he dropped his chalk, “what happened to you?”, and jogged over, not exactly invading Katsuya’s personal space quite yet but approaching enough to take a close look. His face had dropped a shade in color—though it might have been the bad lighting causing this impression—and one hand came up quickly to cover his mouth and half the shock. The other half remained visible in his wide eyes. Katsuya really didn’t want to do this right now.

“It’s not-”

“You’re bleeding!” Oh christ, if he’d get a bug every time someone felt the need to point it out—as if they thought he hadn’t noticed it yet.

And there it went, all that cozy, personal space, right down the gutter. Yugi rushed in just like the heroic fool he had proven to be the other day. He grabbed Katsuya's hand and lifted his arm a little to take a look at the wound but Katsuya jerked his hand away—a reflex more than anything and absolutely not a good idea because it hurt like ass. “Just leave it alone, okay?” He gritted his teeth in his effort not to give away just how much. Already he saw Yugi fumbling for his phone. “Ah-ha! Nah, put that away.”

“You need a doctor.”

He purposefully inserted a short but meaningful pause and leveled his voice. “I said: _put. it. away._ ” It was forceful enough to make Yugi stop and think for a moment. Crippled or not, a wolf was a wolf before a sheep. He knew all too well.

Katsuya could tell he was thinking, his eyes moving quickly from left to right, going over possibilities. “Alright… at least come in an—”

“No.”

“Let me have a look at it.”

“For _fuck’s sake_...” Katsuya made an attempt to walk past the half-size, scanning the alley to the right to see if he could go that way.

“You have to get that cleaned.” Yugi’s voice had settled. He put away his phone but grabbed Katsuya by the lower end of his jacket. A daring move in Katsuya’s eyes, not exactly what he had expected but then again, Yugi had stood up to Ushio as well, so… he probably really wasn’t the scaredy-cat he looked to be. “My parents aren’t at home. We have first aid stuff in the house and ice for your eye.” He gave Katsuya a moment to contemplated. “I— I won’t ask any stupid questions. Just... if it stays like this, you will risk an infection.” _Little shithead_.

Yugi was about the last one he wanted help from— _again_. But the gnome was right. And if he could somehow get the swelling in his face down to a minimum, that would be grand. He was skilled at covering the bruises with makeup, but swelling couldn’t be covered so easily and if his dad was to spot one swollen eye, he would make sure to dish out a second one. So he caved. Perhaps his most painful move today, but unfortunately his best option right now. He still scolded himself for taking this way to the park, to begin with. Should have gone the long way around. Yugi ignored the chalk on the ground as they walked in and left the board untouched as well.

They took a side entrance that Katsuya didn’t know existed but he was grateful because it seemed as if Yugi tried to do him a favor by avoiding his granddad who was most likely running the shop desk right now. “Go upstairs, I’ll be up in a second.” Katsuya didn’t know what to say. So he just did as he was told until a moment of regret washed over him and he decided to just walk out again and run off. Yugi was quicker. The moment Katsuya had turned to go back down, the little nerd had appeared at the bottom of the stairs, holding a big plastic bowl in his hand, an ice pack inside. Katsuya clicked his tongue and surrendered. 

“Second door on the left”, Yugi directed him from behind. “Ignore the mess if possible.” _What a nightmare_. Katsuya turned left, Yugi right—presumably to the bathroom. ‘YUGI’ was spelled out in woodcut katakana on the top of the door, just like the doors of 5-year-olds in movies. He rolled his eyes but pushed it open and himself inside. Now that the adrenaline rush was through and the exhaustion took over, his muscles twinged with every small effort. The room was no mess whatsoever. Yugi didn’t know _‘mess’_. There weren't even empty beer cans everywhere, sure didn’t look like this place was invested with roaches either and it smelled nice. A couple of manga lay sprawled across the floor and a random mug stood on the carpet, next to a pillow that sure looked like it didn’t belong there but at least the floor was clean so who would complain. He spotted an alarm clock on the nightstand and picked it up. 8:40 PM. He was surprised their shop was even open past eight. “You can sit.”

Katsuya flinched and turned, nervously putting the clock back down. Yugi was packed to the brim with scissors, bandages & band-aids, alcohol, cotton, towels.

Once more, Katsuya was reminded of how extremely uncomfortable he felt to be here of all places. He shouldn’t have made this Yugi’s issue. Yugi wasn’t just a classmate, he was _the_ classmate chosen to be Katsuya's no. 1 victim—one of his favorites to pick on throughout junior and middle. Having him act like this just made everything worse. As if him standing up for them the other day hadn’t been enough humiliation already. “You don’t really—” Yugi dropped everything to the floor and gave Katsuya a very gentle push toward the bed that made him sit down at the edge before leaving the room once more to retrieve the big bowl that was now filled with water.

He placed it next to Katsuya’s feet. In the process, some of the water spilled out onto the carpet but he didn’t seem to care at all. It was only a splash anyway. Yugi took place in front of Katsuya, on his knees, about 60cm between them. For a few seconds, they both didn’t say a word, the obvious issue dense enough to grab it out of the open air. “Right, so… could you actually sit on the floor instead?” Katsuya couldn’t help himself but crack a smile over Yugi’s apologetic expression. As if he was worried to bother him with this request. Maybe, he thought, Yugi’s mom used to place them like this when she cared for his scrubbed knees. Just that—obviously—Yugi was way too short to reach Katsuya’s arm from down there.

“You know, I can do this myself, you’re not—”

“Oh, j- just shut up will you?” Katsuya was taken aback. That came out shy but sharp. Yugi was obviously still about 20% afraid of catching a slap with a tone like that, but it was certainly the first time he sincerely talked back. Katsuya kind of liked it. So he decided to listen and planted himself on the floor, back propped against the bed frame now, legs crossed. “I- I meant because it will be hard for you to reach everywhere.” Katsuya kept his smile but Yugi couldn’t see because his eyes were glued to the carpet now, eager to hide his insecurity. “Can you take off the jacket?” He did. “Wow... It’s properly ruined. Sorry 'bout that.”

“Ain’t your fault.”

“Well yeah, but still.” Katsuya’s eyes followed Yugi’s movements as he took one of the towels and soaked it in the water bowl. “Uhm… the shirt. Also. Please.” Yugi sure as hell was the most awkward person he knew. Holding back any actual commentary about it, he removed the shirt. Pulling it over his head caused more pain than he had imagined. It was this well-planted kick he had taken to the side, by some redhead he had never even seen before. Gotta look out for that one in the future. He was already looking forward to teaching him a lesson when they met the next time. He could only hope nothing was injured inside. But according to his knowledge, if there was any bleeding internally, the skin would have started to turn purple or whatever by now.

He hadn’t noticed it right away but when he did, the look on Yugi’s face flustered him a bit. Yeah. He knew that kinda face already. Didn’t really wanna look but couldn’t look away. Even his ears were flushed with some color! Truly too innocent, no wonder he was a prime victim.

As soon as the thought had escaped him, Katsuya felt sorry for it. Yugi was a good guy—obviously. But life was a fucked up show that didn’t hand out prizes for being good. And Katsuya hated that. That, and the bitter taste of realizing that he, too, was part of the problem. He sniffled. “Ain’t as bad as it looks,” he felt the need to say. “Most are older.”

Yugi turned away and reached for the towel, wringing it in his hands. Already, just the sound of it had some bizarrely calming effect. “Sorry..., I didn’t mean to stare. I didn’t think you were hurt this badly.” He spread the towel across both his hands and gestured to Katsuya to lift his hand. Some water dripped onto his thighs but it didn’t seem to bother him. 

“As I said, ain’t all fresh.”

“They were fresh once.” Yugi started to rub the dirt and dry blood off the skin, evidently taking great care not to put too much pressure at first; not to cause him any pain. 

“Well, they don’t hurt anymore.”

The faintest, saddest smile hushed over Yugi’s face. Was he about to cry? “Just looking at them hurts,” he said under his breath, as if to himself. Katsuya thought about that for a second but stopped before he, too, could feel it. “Oh, I forgot!” Yugi abandoned his task and dropped the towel back into the bowl, then reached behind him and unwrapped an ice pack from a plastic bag. He handed it to Katsuya. “That’s for the eye. It’s been out now for a couple of minutes, shouldn’t be freezing anymore but if you prefer you can put a towel around it?”

“It’s fine like this.” He placed the pack across his face covering the right eyebrow and cheekbone. Right away, a chilly thickness reached into the top layer of the freshly marked skin, embracing the throbbing that intensified for a brief moment—a flare of resistance—but soon began to cave in. A dull sensation spread especially around the cheek and shortly after the humming by his right temple also subsided.

“Don’t forget about the split lip.” He wouldn’t. “Let me know when it hurts,” Yugi said as he picked the towel back up to continue.

“I’m hard to break.”

“Sure.” Gently, Yugi started wiping every inch, his touch growing bolder and more confident as he kept going, probably because he noticed that Katsuya never winced or recoiled or showed any other sign of discomfort. Besides the obvious bigger wounds there were multiple scrubs and blue spots. He dunked the towel back into the bowl to clean it and the water quickly took a barn red tint. He adjusted the pressure noticeably when he worked around the cut on his arm. “Won’t this need stitching?”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Sounds like you have too much experience with this stuff.”

“...”

“Or are you just afraid of doctors?”

“Huh?” Ridiculous.

“Didn’t think so”, he giggled. 

Just like this, he went over Katsuya’s arm, then his neck and collar—one really big blue spot was right between the collarbone and right shoulder—the chest and lower belly. He reached around his sides which did get a grimace of pain out of Katsuya eventually but still no moan or other audible avowal. Periodically, Yugi looked up to check if he was still doing okay.

“Is Honda… like this as well?” It was quite palpable that the questions he held under his tongue were troubling him. This was him testing the waters against their agreement. Katsuya was very aware of all the marks on his body, it was no surprise that Yugi started to make assumptions. Behind his attentive eyes, his mind must wander circles, trapped between the promise not to ask and the weight of not asking. But it was no secret that Katsuya got into a lot of trouble, lots of fights. Yugi probably assumed his constant escapades with other stupid teenagers and gang youngsters were the reason for all those scars.

But, of course, there were other, bigger, and much worse people out there than teenagers.

“Not quite.” He tried resting his left arm on the edge of the bed behind him but lifting it caused too much strain after all so instead he shifted his weight and straightened up a little, taking some of the pressure off the ribs. “He’s actually not much of a trouble maker. More like a sidekick hero who saves my ass every time, and catches a kick here and there in the process.” Sadly, that was completely accurate. He could not remember a single time where Honda was the aggressor in any of their quarrels. Once more he shut down his train of thoughts, as it was sliding into dangerous territory.

Finally, Yugi dropped the towel into the bowl and pushed it aside. Without much of a break, he grabbed the cotton and alcohol. “This will sting a bit. Gonna start at the big one here.” He saturated the cotton with alcohol and carefully patted down the area around the big cut on Katsuya's arm. The tip of his nose might have barely moved, just a little, but else his face remained one for the poker table. All fine. Yugi checked yet again, worried he could do more damage than do good. “… you do have quite the high tolerance, hm.”

“Hey, Yugi…”

Katsuya might be a bully. But he, too, had his order of things. And he needed to know what the deal was between them, otherwise he wouldn’t know how to behave appropriately from now on. He was a simple guy. There were rules, easy rules. He had pushed Yugi around for years and years and the only acceptable response to that was for Yugi to hate and fear him. That’s it. Katsuya needed this kind of logic. And right now, his logic was crumbling because Yugi didn’t stick to the rules.

He had moved on to a new cotton ball and the scratches on his belly. “Hm?”

“Why you helpin’ me?” Nah, that didn’t quite cut it. His voice had betrayed him and to offset the lack of punch behind his words, he went on before Yugi could. “Hate to be the one to point it out but… I wasn’t exactly the best classmate over the years.”

“Well,” Yugi looked up at him and smiled, for the first time this evening he wasn’t avoiding direct eye contact. And it was a smile that Katsuya would remember for a very long time because it was so warm and inviting it conferred him with bittersweet nostalgia, reminding him of times when late summer evenings and dusk-drowned skyscrapers still meant something. “We still have time to change that.”

The muscles beneath Katsuya’s brows tried to fold behind the numbness. “I’m serious. I don’t get it.”

Yugi sighed, the tip of his little finger brushed across some old scaring close to Katsuya’s belly button. These smaller ones usually weren’t eye-catching but Yugi was looking so closely, he would spot all of them. Even the really old ones from many years ago. 

“You know”, he finally said, after he had moved on to the right arm, which forced Katsuya to remove the cool pack from his face. “Let’s say it is a good chance for me to say thank you.”

“Thank you?” He pulled back his arm, a wave of anger oncoming. “Are you taking the piss?” Despite his irritated expression, Yugi didn’t flinch this time. He just grabbed the hand once more and pulled it back toward himself.

“Friday night you came back to bring the missing piece for my puzzle.”

“I didn’t do sh—”

“My granddad told me. By his description, it could have been only you.”

“Yeah, but that was after I fucking stole it from you and threw it away!”

“So?”

“So? What’s wrong with you?”

“I mean, yes, that wasn’t… nice, but…” He collected the used cotton in a plastic bag and tossed them aside. Then he grabbed the bandages and gauze pads which he sprayed with some ointment before placing it on top of the two biggest cuts. “But you didn’t need to bring it back, you know. What I mean is, nothing would have happened to you if you didn’t. But you still went and looked for it and brought it back and… that means a lot to me.”

“Ts… least fucking thing I could do.”

“No.” Katsuya looked at him but Yugi was too immersed in his effort to return that look. “No. That was the most you could have done. And you did it.” Katsuya had always looked at kindness as something rather taunting. It was weak and would always be taken advantage of. It was gullible. Until now. Now, looking at Yugi, who, despite him having been hurt so many times as well, still saw beyond the stench and tried to reach for the best in him, he thought it was quite beautiful.

“Well…”

“Almost done.” He picked up the bandages and started to roll them tight but not too tight around the gauze pads at his arm and around his belly for which they both got up on their knees, so Yugi could reach around his waist.

“Thank you. For helping me. And… I’m sorry. Not just for the puzzle, but also for all the times before.”

“I know you are. I appreciate it.” He finished the bandages by tugging the ends in between the other layers and securing it with some tape. “Not the most pretty, but it should do the job.”

“Thanks.”

“I am not sure about the band-aids now, maybe it is better to leave the smaller cuts open, they might heal faster if they are exposed to air and it doesn’t look so bad anymore after being cleaned. How is your face doing?” Yugi took a look. “Oh wow! My god it’s… really purple. Iuh… i- is this okay?”

He couldn’t feel much, the ice had left the skin numb. But the color wasn’t unusual, he knew it was gross sometimes. What he wanted to know was if the swelling was gone. “Got a mirror?”

“Ah, of course.” Yugi heaved himself up and gestured to the side next to his dresser. A long mirror was fixed to the wall there. Katsuya got up and walked over while Yugi started to pick up the stuff from the floor, partly eying after him, curious for his reaction. But he was left disappointed because Katsuya saw exactly what he had expected, not giving much of a response.

“Looks pretty good. Bet the other guys look way worse.” Yugi walked past him, hands loaded with all the waste.

“Wait just a moment, okay?” Katsuya checked the time once more. 9:25 PM. So he would make it home on time. He checked his face again. Would this be passable though? He wasn’t sure. The lip was pretty fucking obvious. For just a brief moment, he allowed his mind to spin kinder thoughts. He could ask Yugi to stay over. Very quickly he dismissed the idea. Looking around the room now, he did feel the kindness all over. It wasn’t just Yugi, it was this whole place. The shop. And the grandpa. The school books on the shelf above his desk, the comic books on the floor, significantly more loved. The bedsheets that weren’t made and the Rubik's cube on the nightstand. It was all so kind in nature.

“Here.” Again, he swooped around, caught by surprise by Yugi’s approach.

“Don’t sneak up on people like this, Jeez!” Yugi balanced some clothes atop his hand. “Oh, no, no. Seriously—”

“Jounouchi-kun, your clothes are… no good. Anymore. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well, they’ll do until I’m home.”

“What they’ll do is get you all the attention you tried to avoid sneaking around the alleys earlier.” _This guy_! Since when was he the type to always have the last word!

“Well, dude, you’re forcin’ me to say it: I doubt I can fit half of myself inside one of your sweaters, okay.” And right away, he bit his tongue because he really could have said that nicer. He had made fun of Yugi’s height—or the lack thereof—countless times before but tonight it stung himself quite a bit. He frowned and tried to jumble some words together to make it better but before his brain found a solution, Yugi started laughing and shoved the clothes into Katsuya’s arm. “What’s funny?”

“I’m aware of my height, believe me. They're my dad’s. Haven't been worn in like four years. He is more your size, though they still might be a bit short on the arms, but better than your leftovers for sure.” Four years? Katsuya felt a swelling in his chest, a symptom of empathy. He must have had a look on his face, too, that he wasn’t aware of, because Yugi raised his hands in defense and quickly explained: “He is just overseas a lot, for work, he only comes home every other month and trust me, he won’t miss these.” Katsuya was relieved to hear that. He didn’t know he cared, but Yugi deserved nothing bad.

“Well… thank you then. I’ll make sure to not get them ruined.” He pulled the hoodie over and changed from his dirty jeans into the sweatpants. Grey in grey, it suited him. Certainly much more comfortable as well. He took a quick look at himself in the mirror. The hoodie was pretty perfect, actually, just the legs on the pants were too short but he pulled them up a little more and that helped make it look purposeful. Not that he was a fashionista, but he had his moments of giving a fuck every once in a while. “Thanks, man.” He looked around. Yugi had already collected the items off the floor but there were small patches of dirt all over the carpet where he had sat down. Must have fallen off his clothes. “Looks like I left quite the mess.”

“Don’t worry about it. Easy enough to fix.” Yugi checked the time but his look quickly got lost in the dark outside the window and from the reflection, Katsuya was able to tell that he was worried. It had been a very sudden change in his look but far away from subtle. “Tomorrow…”

“Hm?”

“What are we going to do about Ushio-senpai?” He turned around again and looked at Katsuya. The stress was so visible in his eyes now, clearly, this had been on his mind ever since their collision on Friday. Understandably. First, he had taken quite the beating, and then the asshole had the audacity to ask for fucking protection money. What a swine. Yugi wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with rotten garbage people like that. But he would take care of him now. As a friend. He owed it to him after all he had done.

“Yugi.” He picked up his jacket from the bed and moved his phone from its pocket to the tracksuit trousers. Then he grabbed the shirt and jeans as well and held it up. “Can you do me one more favor and trash this for me?”

“Ah, of course.” He took it off him and hurled it into his arms.

Katsuya noticed a very faint shaking in his hands. As calmly as he could and with a serious enough face—at least in his imagination—he placed one hand on Yugi’s shoulder and looked at him. “Don’t you waste another minute thinking about that dude.”

“What?”

“I’ll take care of that, alright? He ain’t your problem.”

“But the money?”

“No, no, no, Yugi. You don’t know how this works. If he gets his money tomorrow… what do you think ’ll happen?”

“He’ll leave us alone?”

“He will demand more the day after.”

“Huh?”

Katsuya let go and turned away toward the door, ready to leave. “Just forget about him. It was my fault to begin with, that you got into all that trouble. I’ll make it right.”

For a moment Yugi stared holes into his back, and Katsuya just wanted to believe that he came across as the coolest guy saying all that. Yugi would soon enough be all over him if he went on like this. He smiled and walked out into the hallway. _What was he even thinking_ … He shook his head to air it out. Annoyed at himself but not showing any signs of that, he hobbled down the stairs when Yugi finally caught up with the game and chased after him.

“Jounouchi-kun, wait a second.” He grabbed him by the sleeve again and made him stop. “You aren’t planning to fight him or something crazy?” Katsuya laughed and brushed the question off. From behind the door that separated the private part of the house and the shop section, his grandfather's voice emerged.

“Yugi?”

Yugi looked as if he had been caught in the act. “Sorry, grandpa, it’s nothing!” he shouted in response. The door stayed closed.

“Don’t worry,” Katsuya took back the conversation. “I learned my lesson,” he claimed, meaning that he would know how to fight back next time around but making sure it could be heard as ‘I am not going to go into another fight’ instead.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”

That was very random and most unexpected. They stared at each other until they caught on to the awkwardness. Yugi brushed his hair back. He looked nervous. _So kind_. 

Katsuya declined—with an effort not to sound sad or disappointed with his own decision. Really, he would have loved to stay. But in the end, the longer he stayed here, the harder it would get to go back home, he knew that and he wouldn’t take the risk. His stone facade had already cracked, this was as far as he would allow this to go. He promised himself, he would from now on be Yugi’s guard. He would allow _no one_ to harm him and that's how he would pay back what he owed. And for a start, he would take care of that piece of shit Ushio.

Yugi’s face was still flushed when they said goodbye.


	2. The other one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katsuya made up his mind:  
> He will be watching out for Yugi from now on and he'll try to make up for the things he has done to him in the past.
> 
> But on his way home he witnesses something that sways his resolution. Yugi might not even need him or his protection.

It was past ten by the time he crossed the concourse before the city museum where an unfittingly modern turret clock was fixed a couple of meters above the wide entrance gate. By now, even the last remains of the day had fallen behind the horizon and a baby-bellied moon illuminated the city instead. He didn’t enjoy the scene much.

Shadows were one thing during the daytime, but quite another in the dark—where they became more sinister, a black-on-black reminder to the bypasser that there were things darker than the absence of light.

Some loners were still out and about, just like himself. The air was just chilly enough to be refreshing, to keep him somewhat awake, despite being trapped in this weird state of consciousness where the body was so clearly exhausted but the brain would keep on pushing and pushing, not listening to the tired arguments of legs and arms and feet.

He should get going, but the last place he wanted to be right now was his stinky apartment on the lower end of the city. He tried to recall the smell of Yugi’s bedsheets behind him but realized it was weird as fuck and tossed the thought as far away as possible. His pace had slowed down drastically from when he started at the game shop. He kept on switching focus between the pain in his side and Ushio. All well and good making promises left and right to Yugi, but he needed to follow through with it as well. And for that, he would need Honda, for sure. Cause that brute was no joke and under any other circumstances he would have probably left it alone but there was absolutely no way he would let Yugi get tangled up in some bullshit like that.

He flexed his right arm in a stress test and threw a punch into the empty air. Even without his left, it wasn’t outlandish for him to assume he could still dish out some useful jabs, but the pain by the ribs was an issue and his balance was off as well.

When he passed the museum for the third time, it was past eleven—going on twelve when he arrived at the school gate. He stopped there. The lowlight gave him the creeps, obscuring a familiar scene into something haunted straight out of a horror movie. The school’s main building, visibly separated into a classic and a modern wing connected by a glass tower staircase leading from one into the other, as well as the old gymnasium on its right flank and the smaller administrative unit—facilitating the secretary, the old canteen, the headmaster’s office, and an infirmary—on its left flank, were all tied up together within the constraints of a withering brick wall. During nighttime, the light poles inside the school compound were always lit, obediently interrupting the ghostly midnight on each corner of the main building. But it was a faint glow more than it was a legitimate light source, forcing shades into the environment that seemed almost unnatural.

All sorts of small bugs gathered around the gleam, searching for heat.

Lost in his angsty thoughts, he first deemed it a result of his active imagination but when he listened closer, there was no doubt he could hear voices from within the schoolyard. Who would be in there at this time? A little more nervous than he liked to admit, he whipped his foot up and down, listening to the rhythmic sound on the asphalt. Shallow rustling from the bushes and trees planted beside the gate overlayed the low mumbles, making it impossible to understand what was being said. Besides, whoever was there was standing somewhere close to the side entrance of the main building, down by the gym, so he would not be able to see anyone unless he went inside. But a gate had never come between him and his everlasting pursuit of distraction, camouflaged as curiosity. He wasn’t typically enthusiastic to get into there but the brick-type entrance gate would pose no issue. The wall going off either side was not much higher than he was tall but the flat surface didn’t give him much to work with. The two pillars framing the actual gate, however, were parted into neat sections by horizontal carvings along the shafts. _What a piece of cake_.

He stepped back, took a breath and one - two - three - step, jump, both his hands grabbed simultaneously—the left one only for support on the stone capital, the right one, to lift his weight, held on to one of the spikes on top of the gate, his feet had enough friction to allow another push and in one more smooth movement, he let himself drop down on the other side.

Slightly off the mark and a little faster than he had calculated for, he landed with his feet not quite prepared and his legs a tad too stiff. The shock ran through his ankles but subsided within seconds. Nobody's perfect. He shuffled over toward the gym, the voices grew louder. If he would approach from this side, he would be noticed the very moment he peeked around the wall.

He changed the plan and went the other way around, surprised by how much the adrenaline accounted for a temporary phantom recovery. Or maybe Yugi had healing hands. Finally, he sneaked around behind the gym, where he was covered quite well not only because this side lay in complete darkness—again, he had a very hard time trying to ignore the ghostly way the branches and leaves moved in the wind—but it was a bit uncared for, too, and overgrown by bushes and greens. He just needed to watch out for his feet not to get caught in some woodwork and cause him to trip or otherwise make too much noise. In this sense, the wind was working in his favor, making up explanations for any smaller sounds as he sneaked along the wall; the voices became louder until finally, he was able to make out words. “...me explain the rules.”

Katsuya stopped to listen, though he was curious to see who was there. But he could not focus on _what_ was said and _also_ his footing at the same time.

“It’s simple. You place the notes on top of your hand. Then you stab the knife through it. The player gets to keep only whatever money will remain stuck to the blade but must at least stab one note. The game continues until the last note is gone. Winner is whoever has the most notes in the end. Naturally.”

The hell was going on? Slowly he moved forward, inch for inch.

“You lose if you attempt to pick up the money by hand. Or if you abandon the game midway.”

“In other words, a game of courage…”

Ushio! Katsuya recognized the voice right away. What the hell was _he_ up to in the middle of the night? _He needed to get closer_. Biting his lower lip, he ducked further into the shadow and finally reached the end of the wall from where he would be able to spy around the corner of the gym front, and hopefully get a good look at what was going on. While he was moving, he picked up only a few words, something about a penalty, and once he stuck his head out, he — sure enough — spotted Ushio right away. His signature coat with the ‘ _disciplinary committee_ ’ badge and his broad shape were quite recognizable even from behind. His friend, however, was hidden behind the inmate-shoulders, one of those vault boxes used in gym class was propped up between them.

They started with a game of rock-paper-scissors. Assumably to determine who would go first. Katsuya crouched down to watch although he felt growingly restless in his spot. The rustling of the bushes that had made for a nice cover was now turning against him, the chilly breeze crawled underneath his sweater, coating his skin in discomfort. The ground was solid but not solid enough and due to the darkness and suspicious half-quiet around him, it seemed more alive than it should. Just like the branches hanging off the trees.

He was aware that his anxiety was adding to the spook and that things weren’t half as terrifying as they seemed right now. Hours later, when he was lying awake in his bed, he would try to explain all of what was about to come, in part at least, with that exact eery afterglow of just another night taken too far, with fatigue and his inherent fear of the supernatural that might have suggested to his brain some things that weren’t really as they seemed. 

“Well, I’ll go first then.”

Unable to pinpoint the impression, the other guy also sounded familiar. He had a weird way of talking, but not quite a foreign accent. Katsuya shook his head barely, trying to recall anyone that fit that voice pattern. No dice. Too curious to see more he mustered some courage and dared stuck out his neck a little further, his left shoulder pressed against the wall, relying on the light to be on his side. When he finally saw and recognized the other player—one hand propped on the vault box, the other one raised, knife blade facing down—he could not believe his eyes. His mouth opened in a reflex but what tried to be a word got stuck in his throat even before his hand reached to cover the careless moment.

Yugi…

It was Yugi, alright. Without a doubt. Katsuya could feel just how wide his eyes stood open and the lids sprung apart even further when he saw Yugi dash the knife down toward his hand! He jerked his head around at the last second—unable to watch. It sure as hell had seemed like he had knocked it down full force. All the while smiling like a mad man. He exhaled forcefully before turning back to check again.

“Hm. Not even ten notes from the look of it.”

But this voice! That wasn’t Yugi… But he was right there, holding the freakin’ knife which had now some money stuck to its knifepoint. The lighting was surely bad but those two stood pretty much between two night lamps so there was no excusing this away with not seeing right.

Yugi, who wasn’t even half of Ushio’s mass, looked up to him, his face smug and graced with a smile that could only be described as fiendish! And not a drop of worry. Where was all the fear from before?

If this would turn out to be Yugi’s long-lost cousin who had come back to town to stir shit up after being released from juvie, that story would make more sense than to just accept him as Yugi himself based on a slight resemblance. _Well_.

Quite similar. Too similar for a cousin, really.

Maybe a brother.

 _Identical_ , actually. If only he would get rid of that horrid smile. So a twin. Juvie-twin? Maybe he looked more devious than he was. Perhaps this was a potential third party for his so far two-man-gang? After tonight he might be happy to join forces with him and Honda, seeing that he had already made an enemy of Ushio. He passed the knife to Ushio and said something unintelligible before Ushio, in return, demanded him to shut up.

Katsuya's mouth ran dry, he abandoned his train of thought and focussed once more. He tried, briefly, to dub the twin Yuto, to help convince himself that this was indeed a different person…

But no.

No matter how one looked at it. It was Yugi, alright. Their words faded into the background once more. Katsuya didn’t care anymore. He stared at his classmate, trying to make sense of all of this. That kindness he had seen in him, how could it have vanished so entirely? Completely! And it changed him so drastically, that he really would believe it, in an instant, if someone was to come along and say this _wasn’t_ him. Yes.

But until someone actually came along to say that… his simple mind was trapped with the only truth he saw.

He had been so utterly entangled in his thoughts and disbelief that he didn’t right away understand what was happening when he heard Ushio's growling. “Drop dead, Yugi!” 

Slave to his instincts, Katsuya came _so_ close to jump out and haul that bastard over, and it sure as hell wasn’t the knife raised in his hand that stopped him. It was Yugi’s wild eyes. As Ushio leaped to take a stab at him, Yugi’s expression changed into something feral and it sent shivers down Katsuya’s skin; his stomach turned and his chest pulled tight.

“You couldn’t stick to the rules, after all. But who’d be surprised—,” the Yugi said delighted almost, skillfully dodging the assault.

“What the hell-”

“Now then, receive your punishment!” _Punishment_?

Yugi raised his palm toward Ushio; and even though Katsuya could not _see_ anything, he felt the shock deeply—something had gone straight through the ground, reaching for the earth’s center! For a split second, the sound of the world seized into absolute silence only to clash back in an ambush. The illusion was so violent that Katsuya was convinced every single living creature on the planet must have felt it the exact same way he had.

Ushio, instead of chasing after his opponent, fell to the floor right there and started to blabber something nonsensical. Yugi grabbed the money up from the vault box and took a good look at his victim; before he had the money slide into his jacket pocket and turned to leave.

The upperclassmen on the ground was a rather distracting sight, but Katsuya, in a last attempt to solve a mystery too big for his imagination, locked his eyes onto Yugi, wandering off toward the gate, slowly, satisfied. Absolutely everything about him was someone else. His posture and the way he walked, the evil snickering, the thin shadow that was thrown on the ground by the little shimmer provided by the night-light poles.

Perhaps, he should have chased after him. Perhaps, he should have asked him about what the fuck just happened.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He could not even lift his hand to scratch his nose. He was strained. Ushio’s talking became static white noise—delusional joy over something no one but him even saw.

What had Yugi said to him? What had he _done_ to him? Katsuya swallowed heavily, trying to overcome the dryness in his throat, pressed his body to the wall as if he could mold into it and disappear, and allowed his energy to float out of him. He wasn’t worried anymore about being spotted. Yugi was gone and Ushio didn’t give a horse shit.

He had always thought himself a tough guy. People like Ushio didn’t scare him much. All he saw in them was a challenge at best, a beating at worst. But God knew, he was no stranger to that kind of violence and never shied back. He would rather lose a fight than back away from one. No one would call him a coward! But there was _one_ thing that made him shiver like this: To look into violent eyes and not see reason.

Being mean was one thing. Being a bully was bad, certainly. But being able to hide eyes like _that_ behind the innocence he had seen in Yugi… that was a different kind of fuckery!

Unsure what to do with himself and with the wreck that was Ushio rolling around in the dirt beside the side entrance, he sat there for another hour or two, just listening to insanity. Wondering what the next step was for him. Should he call someone? But he couldn’t deal with the police. He sure as hell wouldn’t break that rule of his, not for Ushio. Besides, there wasn’t even evidence that anything had happened at all. What would he even say?

When he finally got up, convinced he would not find the answer he was looking for no matter how long he dwelled over it, his exhaustion covered most of the pain. Just his head had devolved into quite another arduous epicenter, something so severe it made him believe that people could die of headache. It took him another forty minutes to walk home. The city was abandoned now for the most part. The majority of the lost sheep had found their way into apartments and studios and dorms to bridge the little time left before Monday morning with well-deserved sleep or—the less fortunate ones—with just more fights against deprivation, anxieties, sleep paralysis demons, or really any of the gazillion things that would regularly catch up to people.

Unless you had the night shift, in which case you were just fighting against your biorhythm and unlikeable co-workers or drunk customers.

Robotically he sank to his knees beside the basement entrance of his apartment complex and reached into the small hole no one but him knew about, he dragged out a spare key to his apartment and shoved some loose dirt back in—to cover it superficially. He dragged his body up and shambled over to the entrance, letting himself in.

Up two cases of stairs, he found the front door to his apartment closed but not locked. _Of course._ He pushed it open, trying his hardest to make not a single sound, not a peep. And managed. 

He was beaten enough to be afraid he would never wake up again once he shut his eyes. Despite that, he didn’t even get a solid half-hour of sleep. Plagued by achings and nightmares and visions of ancient spirits.

The daybreak was expectedly hard to handle. A brutal initiation. He got up before six—because what was the point in laying there, too conscious for rest—, prepped some grilled salmon, white rice, a small salad, and tofu. No eggs because he had failed to go shopping this weekend. Half of it was left on the table, the other half he carelessly shoved into a plastic container and dropped it in his bag. Although it would have been a welcomed task to accommodate his still astray thoughts, he didn’t waste any time this morning to clean up the mess in the kitchen, it could wait until tonight and he might as well use the extra time to properly lick his wounds. He dropped the cutlery and dishes in the sink and went to claim the bathroom.

Carefully, he pulled the sweater over his head. When he had come home this morning, he had been way too exhausted to care about changing so he was still wearing the tracksuit Yugi had provided. Having lost some of its comfort, he pushed it into a corner, dropped the trousers there as well, and locked the door.

The apartment had not one full-body mirror, but the one on top of the sink was good enough, granting an extensive image of what he had to deal with. The dressing around his waist had unraveled in parts but the arm was still wrapped neatly. He left that one and just undid the former. All in all not too bad. His face was really where it was at. The scratches and bruises along his torso were good enough reason to ditch gym class today, but nothing to fuzz over. The gauze went into the bin. For the one on his arm, he decided it might be best to leave it as was and avoid getting it wet. He brushed his teeth and stepped into a cold shower.

With the cool gush, some of his uneasiness drained below his immediate recognition. _Good_. A long-needed rinse, bleeding out bits and pieces of this wayward weekend—not all of it, of course. Who should be that lucky? He moved his head and neck in circles, pulling his chin to his chest before slowly working it around the joints to see if anything was stiff or blocked. Seemed okay. In a better world, he would have stayed under that shower for another twenty minutes. But next door he heard the toilet flush and therefore, the little peace of the morning was now officially over.


	3. Let's not meet again.

“Yoh-” The familiar voice—good voice—turned his head just as Katsuya was about to walk through the school gate. He stopped and yawned. A Monday-natal melancholy reflected off Honda’s face as artlessly as the morning’s luster off the car-tops sleaching by.

“Yo, man.” He took a fist bump for a ‘good morning.’

“You look like shit.”

“Just trying to start at your level.” Katsuya’s voice was husky from a lack of sleep.

“Word has it you ran into Shimada yesterday," Honda ignored the riposte and pointed at Katsuya’s face. "So, that’s his doing?”

“Been sittin’ by the bush radio, eh?”

“Jokes off, you good?” Unwilling to rely on an earnest reply, Honda tried to catch a closer look to assess the scale of the damage done. Katsuya shooed him away.

“Better than those pricks, tell you that much.” Before he could even chuckle about his comment, pain gushed through the nerves binding his arm to the weekend’s memoir as Honda slapped the back of his hand against it. Way too sudden to allow him to gather control over his reaction. He cried out, clasping the pounding injury. “Dude, _what the fuck_!”

“Hm…,” Honda nodded. “Yeah, it seems perfectly fine!”

“The hell is wrong with you.” Gritty, he fought back the agony with the aftertaste of this morning that was so uncomfortable on every level. The summer heat had gotten to him as soon as he had stepped out of the apartment. A nasty throbbing in his forehead had recurred almost instantly. Between the bandages and his broken skin, he had felt salty sweat stinging—collecting itself there to make his life a little more challenging than it already was: Fencing vertigo left behind by a lack of sleep. Bodily weakness from the fight. Some of his muscles lay sore, his torso was still sensitive to the touch, and switching the tracksuit for his stiff school uniform was that icing on the cake of discomfort. Skipping had crossed his mind, but the memories of the night caught up to him quickly and fueled his need to see Yugi—even if just to convince himself that he was still kind and small and innocent. That everything else was an illusion, already lost in yesterday.

“Will you be alright?”

“Yeah, no worries, it’s just the arm.”

“And the lip,” Honda gestured toward his own as if Katsuya needed guidance as to what part of his face he was referring to. “Or was that…”

“Nah,” he interrupted. “It’s not as bad as it looks like. I got painkillers in my locker.”

“Should have called me.”

“Phone was dead.” Halfheartedly they stopped at the announcement board to check if any teachers were sick or absent to grace them with a self-study period but found no such luck.

“Lame.”

“That piece of garbage lasts like half a day.” Off to their right, a small crowd started to gather at the corner. Katsuya's stomach sank into a pit. Instinct kicked in and dictated to change directions. But another part of him needed to see. Half of that part was hoping he was wrong about what he would find there; the other half knew better. He must have made a weird expression or otherwise given away his unrest because Honda was looking at him funny.

The unintelligible mutter of students passing and or gathering there carried over. And so did, then, faintly, the babbling he had dreaded as they sneaked a bit closer—dirty leftovers of a boogeyman's buffet.

“The hell is going on…?” Honda tiptoed to get a better look, but before success, Katsuya grabbed his sleeve and dragged him away. He didn't need to see it again, after all. No matter how much of a prick this asshole was, thinking that he had spent the night out here rolling in the dirt because something had made him lose his fucking mind… it didn’t sit right with him. Yeah, maybe it was fair. Perhaps that jerk had it coming. Plus, it saved Katsuya from another beating. Maybe he shouldn't feel sorry for him. Maybe he _didn't_.

Maybe Katsuya was just worried. Because he, too, had to atone for something, didn’t he? ' _Punishment..._ ' he heard Yugi’s shadow reaching from within his nightmare. Who was to say that he didn’t have it coming for him also?

“Dude, what’s up?”

“It’s Ushio.” Immediate distress swallowed Honda's face.

“OH god, right, what are we gonna do about him…” He tried to turn against Katsuya’s forceful guidance, futilely. Katsuya didn’t let go of him until they had entered the main building and made it halfway through the entrance hall. The undue temperature caused by too intense air conditioning slapped him right in the face.

“Listen…," he slowed down. "We don’t have to worry about him.”

“What do you mean?” Honda's eyes widened, and he stopped firmly enough this time to also bring Katsuya to a halt, his demeanor demanding an answer. Propped up like this, they made access to the staircase difficult for the other students, but Honda upheld this ‘I don’t fucking care’ face, and it resonated with Katsuya's mood. Their reputation being what it was, no one would dare complain beyond a dirty look.

“Jou. What did you _do_?” he presumed liability—woe touching his words—so sure his friend must be guilty of something quite regrettable. Not a far-fetched concern by any means, but this time Katsuya wouldn’t take that credit.

“Shut up~ I didn’t do shit. He…" No words to be found. Effectively, he had no explanation. And because Honda was so good at picking up little notions in his behavior, he opposed the urge to fiddle with his uniform’s cuffs. "Dunno… had a mental breakdown. Of sorts.”

Honda's look intensified. “Sorry?”

“I don’t know, ok? Just… forget about him.”

Honda knew his best friend well enough to understand when to stop, so he did. Katsuya was grateful. They unclogged the way and moved toward the west wing of the building, where their lockers were located in neat double rows on the ground floor.

“I’m skipping PE. See you later.”

“Alright.” Honda probably figured he would. They parted ways. Until a small break between the second and third period, he would have some time to think about what to do with Yugi. Could he just walk up and straight out ask him what the hell he had done? Or was it saver to play clueless? He picked some ibuprofen from his locker and slammed it shut. _Saver_? 

Last week he wouldn't have believed that there would ever be the need to contemplate his safety when thinking about Yugi. Yet here he was. 

Staring at the dented locker door, grey and worn from years of loveless abuse, the twitching in his fingers called for a cigarette. Signals of losing control. The first time in about a year. His world had tumbled out of its fragile anchors once more, and he was left with little to no footing. “Jounouchi-kun!”

He spun around—tachycardia kicking in, muscles ready—and was greeted by the most endearing, innocent face he had seen in about ten hours that felt eternal now. Unprepared for the early encounter, he clung to his shoulder bag.

“Good morning,” Yugi said shyly and stopped at an awkward distance that was unsure whether he was approaching a friend or a foe. That was alright with Katsuya because he had the same query exactly. Yugi held the puzzle in his hands, although it was secured around his neck. A faint glow on his cheeks disclosed that he was genuinely joyous to see him: a feeling Katsuya wasn’t able to reciprocate at this moment.

“M-morning,” he tripped over his intention. 

Yugi dared take another step, and a familiar glint of worry fell to his face. “How are your wounds?”—entire worlds between the eyes interrogating Katsuya now and the ones he remembered from last night. _It wasn’t him_. So why couldn’t he calm down? “Jounouchi-kun?”

“They’re all good...” Trapped in his thoughts, he failed to notice Yugi moving in, once more breaking conventionally accepted norms in favor of newly established ones between them that Katsuya had not yet agreed to. He reached up, and two fingertips brushed Katsuya’s left cheekbone—that’s what ultimately rattled him out of his trance; he leaned back to escape the allergenic touch.

“Sorry,” Yugi retracted at once. “Just that one… wasn’t there yesterday.” Katsuya touched the scratch himself in response, even though he knew very well it was there now.

“It’s alright, Yugi.” The coy smile was a farce but whatever. “Nothing to worry about.” He would pretend not to know. It was not because it was the right thing to do, but because Yugi’s behavior gave him no choice. How could he question him?

Behind Yugi, a group of four upper-class girls flocked together like pigeons, chatting noisily about some TV station’s van posted outside the school building. Both Yugi and Katsuya listened up to catch the gossip. Yugi was interested; Katsuya was happy for the distraction. As they walked past, one of them pushed into the smaller boy like she hadn’t seen him there. Katsuya threw her a dirty look and snapped a sudden movement, meant to startle her. It worked its purpose, and the girls rushed off, looking back at him with judging but afraid enough faces. “Tse. boneheads.”

“Jounouchi-kun.” He heard his name like a warning and immediately dropped the angry facade. Still, a sour taste remained underneath his tongue because he didn’t know why he acted so protective.

“Yu-”

“Let’s check it out!”

“What?” Yugi’s face was filled with innocent excitement—his cheeks tinted differently now, his smile somewhat cheeky.

“We still have some time before class. It’s TV! What if some cute idol is coming to our school?” Yugi grabbed his sleeve and tugged him along. The draw was compelling in a curious way that unexpectedly lightened his mood. They rushed outside, paying little attention to their peers but just enough for Katsuya to notice in passing that the student body was laced with discomposure this morning. Whether this was due to Ushio’s fall out or the TV van or an unpleasant mix of both, he couldn’t tell.

Just that there was less yawning, less slouching, and more talking among the pupils who were usually still so visibly adherent to the weekend during this time.

The van sat outside the secretariat. For a shy second, the two boys lingered to observe the other students. Most of them walked past, turning their heads but not much else. Yugi moved first. He let go of Katsuya's cuff, drawing attention to the fact that he'd been holding onto it until then, which, subsequently, had him feel a loss, watching Yugi hop over to leach onto his target. His empty spot now beside him.

At surface level, he thought it odd, this closeness. But if he would look a little deeper—which he didn’t—he would find it was the innocuous nature of his touch that claimed him in such an unnatural but gratifying way.

The van’s tinted windows nourished their fantasy of someone unreachable being kept hidden. Katsuya understood it wouldn’t amount to much, but Yugi still tried to peek inside by pressing his face close to the window glass. Of course, the black foil didn’t allow for ocular penetration, but it was endearing to watch. The keeper shut the school gate to their left and announced that all students should find their way into their respective classes within the next five minutes. Katsuya bit his lip, waiting for Yugi to come shuffling back to him. Discouraged. “The windows are all black; can’t see a thing!”

Katsuya looked at him and couldn’t help but smile, feeling something warm. “Don’t worry, Yug! We’ll find her after gym class.” A mauve flare of optimism lightened up the round, soft features as Yugi picked up a brash grin.

“Alright, let’s get gym over with then.” He tried to tug Katsuya along again, but this time Katsuya didn’t follow.

“Yeah…. I’m gonna skip,” he confessed with an apologetic smile, shrugging right-sided. “Not exactly in shape.” Yugi’s expression changed.

“Right! Of course.” A short moment of understanding. A nodded temporary goodbye. “See you after, then.”

“See ya.” Katsuya didn’t stick around to watch him head off, which felt weird. As he turned away, he felt regret. But he fought the inkling. For the next 90 minutes, he would retreat into one of the basement club rooms. Only the upperclassmen used it at times. Because his reputation preceded him, even if one or two of them were there, they wouldn’t say anything, tiptoeing around trouble like the wary cats they were.

But he was lucky today, and none of them were in. He grabbed one of their magazines off the table, pretending to indulge himself in fancy articles about filmmaking and video production. He didn’t understand a thing, skipped multiple sentences, and was so bored at the end of the fifth paragraph that he gave up and looked through the pictures instead. His thoughts kept drifting away from him. He tried not to, but anytime his attention left the paper, all he could come up with was Yugi. Really? Could life not offer anything else to dwell on? His breath was heavy, and underneath all the fatigue, he was restless, unable to keep his body still.

Why was it this important all of a sudden? He blinked rapidly to wash an image off his inner eye: Yugi sitting across, caringly cleaning the dirt out his scratches. Shifting around, Katsuya accidentally ripped out one of the pages trapped beneath his elbow. _Dammit_. He roughed through his hair. The room was supposed to offer some lonely comfort, but he felt trapped at best. Everything seemed to look at him—the PC monitors, the whiteboard, the vending machine, and the basket of writing utensils on the table. Luckily, before he could panic completely, somewhere along the way, exhaustion kicked in.

He woke up when the door opened and three voices busted in, chattering loudly on top of the noise from the hallway, dragging him into disoriented half-awareness. It took him two seconds; by that time, the three senpai looked at him with mild disapproval. He wiped some drool off and stood up.

Unprepared for the hefty sting in his left arm—strained from being locked beneath his head—he winced and looked at them. One of them, glasses and freckles, about Katsuya’s height but much thinner, shrugged back. To him, Katsuya was a wounded lion. And that was okay.

The small chubby one dismissed him first. He walked in and placed his bag on the table, making sure Katauya understood the gesture as ‘ _I’m not afraid_ ,’ which he did. The third one was a tall guy with a smart face, attractive enough to stand out among his friends. He was somehow familiar and gave Katsuya a shy look as he and glasses followed suit, and their talking resumed. That look left Katsuya with itching skin for no reason, and he didn’t like it.

When he left, he made sure to scrunch his eyes at the pretty one—and then at the white plastic light flooding the hallway, making him dizzy. He had missed the school bell, so he wasn’t sure how far into the break it was by now. And since the senpai had stormed the room, he felt a nagging suspicion nesting inside him, which turned out to be accurate upon further inspection: it was lunch break by now. So he had slept not just through gym class in period one and two, but also maths in three and four! That would most certainly get him a phone call home, stress from his dad if he had picked up, and a scolding in the headmaster’s. _Fucking perfect_.

He kicked away at the air before him and made his way toward the main building’s back entry. Yugi usually had lunch in the classroom, but Honda would either be running around the school looking for him or be on the roof. When he turned the corner outside, he already heard familiar noises... 

Some sounds were just too distinct. Unknown perhaps to all those kids who stayed out of trouble, but Katsuya recognized a punch in the face when he heard one. He picked up a stone in passing and moved swiftly, sliding along the wall to see if he could peek around to check who it was. He had no immediate explanation for what he was seeing. His legs moved without thinking when he saw Yugi down on the gravel, but without thinking, he hauled himself into the fight. He caught the perpetrator off guard, pushed him aside harshly, and slumped to the floor next to his friend.

He lifted his head, trying to see if he was hurt badly. There was no bleeding, and he wasn’t unconscious either, just a bit woozy. Naturally, Yugi’s hand found the rim of Katsuya’s uniform but Katsuya, before he could even notice it, got up to take over this battle, stepping up close to the other guy. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing, mate!” Unknown face. No idea who he was up against. The pain in his body was forgotten. He grabbed the guy by the collar and pulled him close. His fist was raised threateningly, and the other immediately caved in, lifting his arms to protect himself from the punch.

“It wasn’t me! The director had me do it! I didn’t want to!” His voice was cracking all over the place, struggling with panic.

“The fuck are you babbling about!” Behind him emerged a peal of dumb laughter as if on cue; Katsuya lowered his fist and checked.

“Well done, Fujita. You can go now.” With Katsuya distracted, Fujita-guy managed to wind himself out of his grasp and run toward the secretariat, where he disappeared behind some bushes. Katsuya spat out on the floor. He was full of rage, unsure where it all had come from so suddenly. Breathing hurt. Holding back hurt even more. 

And then remembering Yugi on the ground killed the hurt all at once. What was he doing here, roughing around! He should make sure Yugi was fine.

Katsuya rushed over to help him up. The shock on his face had faded already, leaving behind a soft swelling on his left cheek. Katsuya fletched his teeth in anger and frustration. How was it possible he let this happen again! “Yug… are you alright?”

Short fingers clutched around the quarter of Katsuya’s jacket, the acquisitive gesture inducing Katsuya with a sense of loyalty. “Sor—” The pain in his face obscured his voice. “There is no idol, after all.”

“Oh shut up, Yug,” Katsuya chuckled, glad he didn’t have a concussion or something. “Who cares.”

Once his friend had found footing, he turned away without hesitation. He noticed the camera propped up next to an older guy—older meaning adult, gym-trained, once, maybe twice a week. Boss-type. He was experienced enough to see a lost fight when he looked at one, but he was just too goddamn angry. Being the fool he was, he went for it and grabbed him by the shirt. He pulled back his fist, ready to place at least one good one before going down. But then—“Go on.”—a smug grin locked him in place. _Adult_. Meaning underhanded. Scheming. “What’s up, kid? Come on, hit me!" The camera. "It’ll make a good story." _Fucking adults_. "I’m not afraid to take a hit for good quotes.” Katsuya’s petulance had walked him into a trap. And the moment of oscillation was enough to have it spring shut.

Tormenting, deep-felt pain, and a momentary paralysis swapped over him from the pit of his stomach as the guy planted his knee full force right into Katsuya’s belly.

Unable to breathe. 

A transitory state of hysteria before his body folded, and next thing he knew, he was on the floor, coughing and snapping for air. Some tears had shot to his eyes. He punched his fist to the ground, a weak signal of the anger he was left with. What was around him faded into cinematic darkness until— “Jounouchi-kun!”

His head was spinning, but Yugi was right there to catch him. Behind his supporting hands, Katsuya could hear the bastard laughing, directing his cameraman to pack his setup and go. Their job here was done, he said, and left them there. What a piece of hot garbage! The ire was so real and red behind his eyes.

“Jounouchi-kun, can you get up?”

Yugi's fervor helped. Katsuya took a deep breath, working to convince himself that the pain was greater than the damage done. _Stomach punches be like that_. He coughed a bit more, held onto Yugi, and managed to unfold himself. The warmth soothed the pain. 

_Warmth_? 

Yugi was radiating, holding him close. It was too intense to attribute it to imagination. Katsuya heaved himself up, pushed until he sat on the floor, making an effort to escape the lure of this intimacy. Yugi’s eyes were locked in emotion. His hands were clenched to fists, his face stern and—

Katsuya pushed back, _away_ , struggled but finally managed to get on his feet, painful coughing, but that couldn’t keep him. Even in bright daylight, it scared the hell out of him. This face—washed out by fury. Yugi got up.

Katsuya couldn't say a thing. He watched him trail the way the two men had left, following it only two or three steps. His eyes latched onto them as they drove away like a hawk latched onto his prey. Katsuya waited—eyes wide—for him to dash out with inhuman speed, picking them off like a .408 Chey Tac.

He pressed his shaking hand against his stomach. Through the windows, he heard Ninomiya-sensei give a stern warning to some students running in the hallway. His ear pulled that way, but his eyes were glued to Yugi’s back. Just the way he was standing made him appear taller. 

It had only been a brief look, maybe a second, if at all. Katsuya wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the differences until much later. Still the same eyes, just swollen with something dark. The same fingers but robbed of their gentle nature. He tried to catch his breath. He wanted to leave but found himself tied to the ground. Yugi turned around, and Katsuya backed away, not prepared for the wicked game. He pressed his lids shut and waited for the shadow. “Jounouchi-kun! Are you okay?” 


	4. To lay a wager.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's in the tags as well, but I want to give a separate warning here: **description of child abuse!** please do not read if this is something that will cause you distress.

“Jounouchi-kun!”

—The echo of Yugi’s voice woke him up. As it had for the past couple of days. Katsuya opened his eyes to darkness, and a dream fell into his subconscious. The ceiling was about to fold itself over him but crawled back into the appropriate distance with his waking. The leftover night still pinned him down, pushing his chest toward the mattress. He waited for the shape of his room to normalize and the pressure to fade before checking the alarm clock: 5:36 AM. It was Friday.

And what a week it had been.

After the incident with the director, things had started to change for Katsuya. At first, he had surrendered to a severe need for space. He had hoped by thinking for himself he could come to some sort of explanation. But he achieved no such breakthrough. He had spent Tuesday digging through magazines and papers on psychology. During class, he borrowed Honda’s phone to research personality disorders, trauma, and parasomnia. Nothing conclusive, yet it appeared he was scratching on the surface of something important. And he was determined to undo the mystery. As of now, however, he was still treading through drift sand. And it pulled him back whenever he felt a little closer to the truth.

He rubbed his palms across his face. From beyond the window, the first signs of daybreak clumsily broke into the apartment. The chatter of birds. An early riser shuffling past the building. Katsuya wouldn’t go back to sleep, so he might as well get up. He pushed back the cover and sat himself up. His rib cage gave him some trouble. He pulled up the shirt and inspected a patch of skin that had turned blue overnight.

The previous evening Katsuya had come home late. He had found the dishes stacked up in the sink and the fridge empty. And a small pile of shards before the kitchen table; The end to an angry outburst poised with too much per mille. He had cleaned it up, taken out the trash, and rushed to Lawson to buy some cockroach traps to place around the apartment. He took extra money for some cabbage, potatoes, rice, and seasoning. By eleven, he had set the traps, prepared some food for the morning, and collected any dirty laundry spread around the place into a basket.

He had draped a thin blanket over his dad, who was passed out in the living room armchair and turned down the rerun of last week’s baseball highlights. _Never off_. The sudden lack of noise would miraculously wake the old man up 99% of the time.

Well—all his care amounted to nothing.

The muffled _clonk_ of Katsuya’s leg against the low coffee table startled him, but it was the subsequent rattling of glass on wood that weakened his muscles. His pulse lay heavy in his throat. He was no stranger to the fatigue that ambushed him then. Surrendering to his fate, he listened to the half-empty Asahi bottle hitting the tabletop first, then the vinyl plank flooring. It took a few spins until the long neck pointed at him as if to expose his misdeed. _Truth or dare, motherfucker_. His heart skipped a beat at the low grunt signaling his father’s waking up.

Instinctively, and only half-conscious, the man reached for the remote control and threw it at his son. “Yorlate, goddammit,” he slurred, tumbling over his words and out the chair. “Been oud widdose friggin gang o’yours, ey.” He tugged at his collar. A sheen of sweat on his forehead had his face glow angrily.

Katsuya had managed to avoid the remote and bent to pick it up off the floor. Behind the table, he saw the beer running under the chair. “Just out buying some food, dad.” If only his voice weren’t shaking so much. “Calm down, will ya-” He thought about where he had put the floor wipes and missed his chance for cover when his father reached out for the beer bottle and slammed it against his side. Katsuya cried out, more in surprise than pain, while his dad raised his voice again.

“Don’talk back, you liddl runt!”

Katsuya pressed his hand to the pain but tried to keep his composure. The bottle had fallen back to the ground, foam spilling all over the floor and the table. “I wasn’t-” _Stop making it worse!_ He had to deescalate the situation. He let go of his ribs and raised his palms in submission. “I’ll get a towel to clean this up, alright?” He hated how his voice changed when talking to his father. It wasn’t even really talking, just pleading. It used to be different.

“Why yu gadda make a mess in da firs’ place.” Undeterred by his imbalance, his father managed to hunch over and pick the bottle back up again. Defenselessly, Katsuya winced and stepped back, which he regretted right away. Shying away was one of those things that could set his dad off easily. The big-boned, bolding man snorted and stepped forward. Chest to chest with his son, he towered over him, staring him down. His red, bloated face and the dirty laugh made him appear so much older. Katsuya had to remind himself that his father wasn’t even 40. His shivering intensified under the effort to keep it at bay. “Your teacha called,” his father said—breath heavy and laced with more than beer.

 _For fuck’s sake_. Why would the school call? Katsuya had handed in the note as asked! All he had left to hope for was that it hadn’t become clear he had faked the fatherly acknowledgment. He should say something; silence was not a good response. But before he could come up with anything—his thoughts spilled out like the drink on the floor—his dad stepped away.

Katsuya took half a breath of foolish relief before realizing he had misinterpreted the movement. The hot, huge backside of his father's hand struck his face. Katsuya spun around, almost smashing his head against the wall. He tumbled down. Hissing in his ears. As always, the shock came before the pain.

“If I ged anather call like dat, you gonna gedid good, yu hear me?” His parent didn’t take as much as another look at him before limping out of the living room.

Katsuya huddled in the corner, hands pressed against the burning cheek, shaking. He wanted to say sorry, but his lips were shut tight. From the hallway, he heard his dad slur again: “Ima be back in a bit.” The key’s rattling faded thin behind the ringing in his head. Only after the door had fallen shut, Katsuya gasped and spat out the iron taste onto the floor. A tiny bit of blood.

“FUCK!” He shouted to himself. From the apartment above came the noise of the broomstick knocking against the ceiling. He kicked into nothing, cursing the old hag up there, and hugged himself tightly, almost rolling into his jacket. He was hurt and shocked and scared. Baring his teeth, he glared into the air before him. He was such a _wimp_. What was he worth if he couldn’t even fight off an old drunkard? He tried his teeth against each other; nothing seemed loose. He wasn’t sure where the blood had come from.

The mess had to get cleaned up. So he waited for the quiver in his body to subside and thought about Yugi, recalling his face. The nice one. He placed him inside the room with the katakana lettering on the door and the comic books sprawled all over the carpet, sitting cross-legged on the bed. It had the same atmospheric glow as an open garden. Sun flooding in, airy, welcoming. How he longed for that place now…

This apartment, on the other hand, was heavy and bothered him. There was never really a turnover in oxygen. One day, it would suffocate him if he wasn’t careful.

It took him just under an hour to clean up the beer and put everything back into place. Now and then, his exhausted mind would drift off into darker corners. Then he would recall the way his classmate had cared for him. Whatever was wrong with Yugi, he wasn’t a monster. No matter how dangerous he was, he had all that compassion and generosity to balance it out. One could not just ignore that! Katsuya was still afraid of what he had seen that night when Yugi had challenged Ushio. Afraid of what had happened to the director. But more than fear, he found solace in Yugi’s presence.

He had wiped the floor one last time. If Yugi would ever truly hurt him, at least he would also patch him up afterward. Katsuya had smiled at the thought and gone back to the kitchen to finish the day before the feeling of missing Yugi could get too close for comfort.

The marked skin was sensitive to the touch, but Katsuya didn’t dwell much on last night’s incident. He took a shower and ignored his bruises; his mind was elsewhere. Fridays had campaign sales in the bakery corner of the small supermarket down the street. It would open at 7, so he thought about getting something for breakfast there since the fridge offered nothing to eat that appealed to him. But the money under the sink was gone, so he forgot about the supermarket. Not that he had much of an appetite anyway. Lately, sleep hadn’t come easy and had often left a tangy aftertaste.

Despite all that, he was looking forward to school. And not just because it was the least terrible place to be. Because Yugi would be there, radiating his inexhaustible goodwill like a ray of sunshine. And Katsuya already felt, whether he wanted or not, invigorated by the thought of it; more energetic, more connected, and—dare he say—a little less broken, even. Maybe. 

For years, Honda had been his sole companion through a turbulent adolescence. With him, it always felt as if he could somehow make it out of this pile of shit—because this friend was there to drag him through.

Yugi’s effect was different. Now, when Katsuya came home in the evenings, the life he came back to upon opening the door struck him drastically and caught him off guard—as if in the span of a single school day, he had forgotten all about just how miserable it was.

He prepared some coffee for his dad and checked the fridge once more to see if there was anything he could take to school with him, but when he thought about Yugi’s carefully curated lunch boxes, he gave up on finding anything satisfying. The coffee machine gurgled quietly.

The first time he had sat for lunch with Yugi was two days prior, Wednesday, right after the news had hit the schoolyard gossip cliques. ‘Acclaimed TV director Hiroise Tanaka, 34, hospitalized and currently under psychiatric care, suffering from intense shock after losing his eyesight under still unconfirmed circumstances. Unlikely to return to the show anytime soon.’ Yes. It was scary. He was happy that this time he hadn’t witnessed the punishment. He still somehow knew that this was hardly coincident.

During history lesson, Katsuya had finished reading an article about periodic memory loss in a magazine he had found in the school library. 

“Hey, Yug… Le’me ask ya somethin’.” Katsuya sat on his desk, swinging his legs back and forth while Yugi was in his chair, playing around with the arrangement in his lunch box.

“Go on,” Yugi replied without looking up. It was just them in the classroom. Casually, Katsuya nodded toward the lunch box.

“You prep these by yo’self?”

“Huh?” Yugi finally looked up and pushed a cherry tomato into his mouth. His table placed a comfortable distance between them.

“Sorry,” Katsuya shook his head, scolding himself for beating around the bush like that. “That wasn’t what-”

“Usually, my mom.”

“Right.” Of course, Yugi had a mom.

“So?” Yugi didn’t stop eating, but he had straightened up a little and blinked curiously. “What did you wanna ask?”

“Do you sometimes…” Katsuya thought about how to phrase this because it was an odd question out of nowhere. Yugi didn’t know he had dwelled over it for 48 hours at that point. He chewed on some melon pan before he continued. “Do you ever like… sleepwalk?”

Yugi’s eyes were big and honest in their confusion as he poked his chopsticks into his lunch. “Would I know if I did?” He probably picked up on Katsuya folding his eyebrows in response, so he continued: “I mean… because it happens while you’re sleeping, right?”

That already answered the question. It was hard to believe such a condition would stay undetected entirely. After all, Yugi was part of a functioning family. “Well, no one ever said I did,” Yugi added, just in case. “Why? Do you?” Apparently, Yugi expected a confession of sorts.

It had been a long shot anyway. From what information Katsuya had gathered so far, it was unlikely a single episode would last long enough to account for Yugi’s behavior. He ignored his classmate’s counter-question and decided to dick deeper instead. “What about losin’ time?” He watched the other crunch up his mauve eyes, a piece of egg roll vanishing in his mouth. “You know, when ya-”

“Yeah. I know.” Yugi stopped eating. Katsuya stilled himself. It wasn’t just the sharp tone of the answer that caught his attention—it was the way Yugi’s skin turned ashen around his cheeks while his eyes stared into nothing. His watery smile seemed forced into place. “Do you?” Yugi asked instead of giving an answer.

Katsuya swallowed the lump in his throat. His limbs were heavy. So it was like this, after all. “No.” He wished he could tell him that it was normal. That everyone lost time every now and then. No biggie. Yugi kept quiet for a moment, biting his lower lip while pushing a piece of broccoli back and forth between a small heap of white rice and two baby carrots.

“Sometimes, I think I’m daydreaming or so. As if I am not quite awake for just a minute.” He paused for a moment. “But I’ve not been sleeping well these days, so I think it is related to that,” he giggled, but it sounded like mockery.

Katsuya sat his melon pan on the table. “Not sleeping, why?”

Yugi shrugged it off and continued eating. “Dunno, just feel tired in the mornings, as if the nights are too short, you know. Well, maybe they are. I started this new manga series, ‘Tennenshoku Danji Buray.’ I just can’t put it away!”

 _Astonishing_. Already, Yugi's face had lightened up again, just as quickly as it had lost its color just a moment prior. The fatigue seemed overcome. Katsuya had shaken his head, hands in his lap, and tugged at his fingers—fighting the urge to comfort his friend.

Although he had left the house early, Katsuya had taken a detour and arrived at school no sooner than usual. This Friday, Honda was excused because the football club—he played center middlefield—had a practice game out of Domino over the weekend. So Katsuya didn’t bother waiting for him at the gate. But he spotted Yugi, trying to catch a look at the announcement boards, as soon as he stepped onto school grounds. He really _was_ short for his age, so short it made him stand out.

Hands in his pockets and with an honest smile, Katsuya walked over to meet him. While his thoughts on Yugi’s case weren’t at all conclusive yet, there was something he was confident about: they were friends now. And for better or for worse, he would face whatever that entailed. To say he was free of worries would be a lie. A sense of danger still lingered. Something dark. “Hey, Yug.”

Yugi turned around and smiled widely as soon as he recognized Katsuya.

And Katsuya put aside all the thoughts about trauma-induced disorders and the personal horrors they were—according to the articles he had found—preceded by. It was tragic, not evil. He put his arm around Yugi’s shoulder, and they awkwardly stalked inside while Yugi talked with excitement about the cliffhanger at the end of the latest _Tennenshoku_ chapter.

“Yug!” Katsuya didn’t wait for the teacher to leave before jumping out of his chair and into Yugi’s field of vision. “Let’s go grab food before headin’ home!” He twirled a pen through his fingers while watching a befuddled expression grow into happiness.

“Uh, okay!” Yugi zipped his bag and joined him on his way out. “Let’s go to that ' _Burger World_ ’ place that opened in town recently! I heard it got great reviews!”

They chose to walk instead of taking the bus. The route past the harbor gave the two boys some time to gush over a new game Yugi’s shop had received the previous day. ‘ _Quarter-life 2_ ’ would go on sale Saturday morning. Yugi suggested for Katsuya to come over to try it. Katsuya promised to think about it.

Since Burger World had newly opened and it was Friday afternoon, they were prepared to wait in line, but it seemed they had missed the lunch-time rush and were early enough to be ahead of the evening crowd. They were immediately welcomed by a sweet voice hidden behind a laminated A2 menu pushed up to their faces. Long legs flashed beneath a fairly short skirt. Katsuya couldn’t help but notice the attention they received from Yugi, his face easier to read than the special offers.

“Welcome to Burger World! Seat for two?" She lowered the menu and continued, “Please follow me. I will show you to—” She froze mid-sentence. The abrupt silence cued Yugi to look at her face instead of other charms. They didn’t know what to say. Anzu—their class rep and Domino High’s most liked overachiever—was about the last thing they had expected behind that heartfelt welcome. Not because the sweetness didn’t suit her, but because overachievers and class reps didn’t act against the school’s rules. And working a part-time job was most certainly against the regulations…

She dropped the menu, and her face paled. In a frenzy, she bent to pick up the paper, her hands shaking. Katsuya and Yugi exchanged a quick look while Anzu gathered her composure, took a deep breath, and gestured to them to come inside with a straight face. They followed her to a table by the wide window front, where she left them briefly to get two glasses of water.

“She doesn't look happy at all …,” Yugi whined.

“Duh…” Besides maybe that Kaiba guy in their class, there weren’t many who could overshadow her accomplishments. And teachers would choose her over him any day because she was kind and lovely on top of all that—a promising outlook. But unlike the Kaiba Corp heir, she wouldn’t be able to buy herself out of trouble. She had a lot to lose.

Anzu came back to take their order. No one said anything besides the necessary. Katsuya didn’t care much, but Yugi furrowed his forehead. His lips lay parted, unsure whether saying something could be beneficial in any way. It was endearing to see how he worried about causing her discomfort. When she brought their food, she didn’t even try to hide the frustration anymore. She dropped the plates on the table with a clutter and drenched the burgers in sauce. But instead of drawing the shape of the store mascot as seen in the advert, she splashed it all over the plates until they appeared freshly slaughtered.

“A-Anzu…,” Yugi whimpered, but she turned away, biting her lip. One fist clenched tightly around the bottom seam of her apron.

Katsuya crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. “You better work on your attitude toward your customers.”

Yugi’s eyes popped open. “Jounouchi-kun!” Clearly, the last thing he felt appropriate was to provoke her.

She flipped her chestnut hair, and her lips curled into the sad attempt of a smile. “Well, …now that I am found out, it’s not that I can stay here for long. So what does it matter?” She moved to leave, but Katsuya swiftly grabbed her wrist to stop her. An unusual move for him. He didn’t touch other people unless it was a fight. She, too, seemed surprised.

He took a moment before speaking up. “We ain’t gonna tell anyone.”—his voice not a whisper but soft enough to sound empathetic.

She pulled back her arm, but the effort was weak and didn’t shake him off. “I have my reasons…,” she tried to placate, defending herself although he had voiced no accusation.

“I’d assume so,” he said and let go of her.

She tugged her chin toward her chest, aware of the power they held over her. “I need the money.” Reaching for understanding, her eyes brushed Yugi briefly. The way she looked for compassion in Yugi while _he_ was the one talking to her, stung more than Katsuya liked to admit.

“Like I said. No one’s gonna hear it from us.” Not that he was unaware of his reputation, but he had not realized that his classmate perceived him as the kind of scumbag to hold someone else's secret over their head like a Damascus sword. Her face regained some color as she focussed on Katsuya again.

Apologetic, she touched the service tray to her chest and smiled. “After high school, I will go to America. To become a dancer…” Not so much a surprise but astonishing nonetheless. Both boys hadn’t thought much about their future yet, so being presented with a vision felt worth noting. She didn’t say she wanted to. She said she _would_. The faint blush suited her face. Katsuya looked down at the table. They had been in the same class for years, but just now, for the first time, he noticed that she reminded him of someone else.

“Well,” he cleared his throat. “If you wanna keep the job, you should practice the thing with the sauce.”

She winked at him. “Don’t worry.” And her angelic expression made him see now what all the others saw in her. “These are on me. Next time will be better.” She bit her lip, smiled, and turned to resume her work. He watched her scurry away.

“That was so cool, Jounouchi-kun.”

“Hm?” He looked at Yugi and found him blushing, his eyes shying away from him. He hadn't done it to impress anyone.

“I-I mean… I am sure that meant a lot to her, thanks.”

“Ah… uhn. I’m not a snitch. I wouldn’t have said anything anyway.” Yugi was showing gratitude on her behalf. Just how he had apologized on someone else’s behalf for what had happened to Katsuya.

Katsuya pushed one of the plates toward Yugi and handed him a wet tissue from a box on the tableside. “Well, let’s see how it holds up. After all, we’ll need an excuse to come back, ey?” He took a big bite. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Anzu leading in another customer. Single guy, middle-aged, a little rough on the edges. Clothes that didn’t fit. Katsuya stopped his chewing. He had seen this man before—those tattoos on his forehead. The burger dropped out of his jittering hands as he remembered. His picture had been on all front pages a couple of years back when his conviction was ruled in court.

Anzu’s cut-off shriek came in unison with the dreadful clicking of the revolver’s safety—so terribly close to her face. Everyone turned their heads. A panic came about. The few other people in the restaurant curled into their seats, shaking, then crying and whimpering. The whole room seemed to move, drawing back from the danger. Yugi and Katsuya had both jumped out of their seats, eyes fixed on their classmate.

“Anzu!” Yugi’s voice cracked. Katsuya reached for him across the table, fumbling for his sleeve. _Do not play the hero, Yugi_. Too intensely, the panic clocked his throat. The thought remained a prayer, squeezing his chest tight. Katsuya was terrified for his friend just as much as for Anzu. Yugi didn’t budge.

The scruffy man had a look around, making sure no one was out of place. “Alright, folks. You better keep it quiet and listen! I don’ have plans to stay long. I’ll grab a bite, and then I’m outta here. In the meantime, I’ll have her company.” The assailant pulled Anzu closer, locking her neck tight with his arm. “You just be nice and quiet, sweetie.” To underline his threat, he pushed the barrel to her temple. Between her lips, which were pressed together tightly, a whimper escaped. “SHUT IT, or I’ll blow your brains out!” He undid the ribbon that was holding her long bob in place as part of the uniform and made her tie it around her head, using it as a blindfold, before sitting her and himself down at the nearest table.

The remaining customers had all flocked together, shaking like lambs, standing in the middle of the restaurant, some cowered on the floor, someone was crying. Katsuya stood right behind Yugi, close enough to see him trembling as he kept mumbling her name in distress.

“A’right,” a sudden collective move backward, and a nervous noisy whisper washed through the room as the jailbreaker swung the gun and pointed at the crowd. “Now, one of you fools will have to bring my food.” Katsuya carefully placed his hand atop Yugi’s shoulder. “You!” Yugi jerked back. “Yeah, the tiny one.” Katsuya’s vision blurred. Acid pushed up from his stomach, burning his throat. “NOW!” Yugi stepped out of the crowd, and Katsuya’s hand remained midair, empty.

The diner was playing an Electric Swing Circus record—a joyful mockery hollering through the hall. Why no police sirens? He needed to act. Now. Now. NOW. His friend took another timid step, but Katsuya was frozen in place. “The rest of you down on the floor! If anyone dares to make a move, the girl’s losin’ her pretty head.”

Katsuya felt his knee on the floor before he even understood what he was doing. So useless, he thought to himself, feeling hollow—his ribs tightening around nothing. The muscles in his arms started to quiver as his pulse sped up, and the anger came back, simmering somewhere deep down. The last thing he wanted to do is follow this lowlife’s fucking rule book. His fist pushed against the flooring so hard his knuckles turned white, and his nails cut the skin on his palm.

“Now, shrimp, listen up. I want a drink. And a smoke with that. Lucky Stripe. Bring a lighter. Must have left mine on death row.” He laughed too loud. Anzu was shaking, tears staining the blindfold. Yugi backed away towards the counter; his movement trailed both by the weapon’s barrel and the culprit's eyes. No one thought it was funny.

Yugi grabbed some Vodka from the shelf. With shaking hands, he collected everything the man had asked for onto a tray before he toddled back, barely able to lift his feet off the ground, so worried not to let the tray shatter to the floor.

Katsuya watched him, an array of worst-case-scenarios flickering through his head, causing a throbbing pain. He turned when he heard Anzu’s voice, thin but full of courage.

“Yugi?! Don’t come he-!” A backhand to her face silenced her. The sound was nauseating, and Katsuya had to look away, tears stinging his eyes because he felt the pain himself. So very helpless yet again. The ringing in his ears made it hard to filter the sounds around him. Was there nothing he could do?

“Anzu!” Yugi’s voice! Katsuya lifted his head; an excess of adrenaline shot through his system. There might have been a flash of light. He wasn’t sure. But even lightheaded like this, he knew what was going to happen next. Yugi placed the bottle, the glass, the cigarettes, and the lighter on the table. And nonchalantly took place across the guy. He chuckled—as if anything at all was funny about this situation.

“I brought what you asked for.” Katsuya’s face turned pallid when he picked up the cadence of Yugi’s voice, entwined now with that same low vibration as in the night he had his standoff with Ushio. A vicious snicker throbbed like a pulse in his undertone. So here came _the other one_. The scary one, eyes filled with fury. The frown cast a shadow over his face, drawing attention to a malicious smile, reminiscent of a distant nightmare.

Katsuya swallowed, but his mouth and throat were dried up. His heart was still beating violently; he was surprised how little it hurt.

“Who the fuck told you to sit, you imbecile!” Hyper-focussed on the other Yugi, Katsuya almost forgot the situation they were in. He didn’t really see the gun anymore, nor did he hear the whimpers around him or the kid crying somewhere in the back. Instead, he listened to the scene ahead.

“And here I thought we could have some fun together.” The other Yugi’s voice still sent shivers down his spine. His arrogance—one arm casually on top of the back of the seat, legs crossed—was just another clue, a hint at his superiority.

A strange admiration overcame Katsuya, making his stomach feel hot. He had certainly never displayed signs of clairvoyance before, but at this moment, he saw something that eased his breathing and calmed him down—saw it _within_ the other Yugi. 

Mamoru Hidaka, who had been charged with capital punishment for several accounts of first-degree murder four years prior, didn’t even know he had walked from one death trap into another. But Katsuya knew. His body relaxed, and everything in front of him became a movie flick. Anzu would be alright. He would be alright. Yugi would be alright.

Katsuya bit down on a smile, and the music picked up once more. ‘Tell me what you saw! ’ the singer hollered through the speaker.

What a strange feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to @moustawott for giving a lot of good advice and sitting through the initial mess for beta-reading! 
> 
> _____
> 
> Also, for those who care, this is the song playing at the very end in the diner: [ EMPIRES ](https://youtu.be/u2uHgIqc5jo)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading ~
> 
> If you want to help me out, leave a comment! I would love to know your thoughts and criticism!  
> English is not my native language so feel free to correct me so I can become better~
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://hakaibunshi.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mugennaphantasm)


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